A stablecoin is a digital token pinned to the value of a real-world currency — almost always the U.S. dollar, one token to one dollar. Unlike bitcoin, whose price lurches around, a dollar stablecoin is built to always be worth a dollar, which is what makes it useful as a way to move money. The two largest, Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), now settle trillions of dollars a year.
A recent analysis points to a striking mismatch: the places where stablecoin companies are founded look nothing like the places where stablecoins are actually used.
Where the builders are
According to data from the tracker Stablescape, reported by Decrypt, about 1,300 of the more than 3,000 stablecoin and crypto-fintech companies it follows are based in the United States. Emerging markets across Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East together account for just 32% of the tracked companies — "despite generating the majority of real-world stablecoin volume," Decrypt noted.
The money that funds those companies is even more concentrated. In 2024, just 30 venture-capital firms captured 75% of all the capital raised by U.S. stablecoin funds, the analysis found — steering investment toward enterprise and institutional products aimed at Western finance.
Where the usage is
The demand sits elsewhere. In Nigeria, more than 26 million people hold crypto, and 59% of them hold USDT specifically, per the same data. In Argentina — where inflation has run brutally high and currency controls limit access to dollars — stablecoins make up more than half of all crypto-exchange transactions. In Brazil, blockchain-analytics firm Chainalysis recorded $318.8 billion in crypto inflows through mid-2025, with over 90% of it moving through stablecoins.
The pattern is consistent: in economies with weak currencies, capital controls or expensive banking, a dollar stablecoin is not a speculative chip — it is a way to hold dollars and move them across borders. Chainalysis's 2025 geography report found cross-border payments dominate stablecoin activity in Latin America, and that the technology has spread fastest where the traditional financial system serves people least.
Why the gap matters
The mismatch has real consequences.
For regulation. The United States passed its first federal stablecoin law, the GENIUS Act, in 2025, requiring issuers to hold full dollar or Treasury reserves and disclose them. The European Union's MiCA rules are already in force. But the people most dependent on stablecoins — and most exposed if one breaks its peg — largely live outside those rich-world regulatory perimeters, under rules that are still being written.
For the dollar. Because stablecoins are overwhelmingly dollar-denominated, their spread effectively extends the dollar's reach into economies where the local currency is faltering — without the Federal Reserve lifting a finger. That has caught the attention of U.S. lawmakers who see stablecoins as a way to entrench the dollar's global role.
For who gets funded. The analysis argues that companies built specifically to serve emerging-market users remain underfunded relative to the demand they are meeting, while capital pools into infrastructure for institutions. The builders cluster in San Francisco and New York; the users are in Lagos, Buenos Aires and Manila. For an industry that markets itself as banking the unbanked, that is a gap worth watching.
